I Will Find You
by darkbloodylegs
Summary: Kyo the cat is trapped in a terrible thunderstorm, and it's up to Yuki to save him from drowning. However, Yuki's weak lungs can only take so much, and soon cat and rat must work together to survive.
1. Chapter 1

Springtime in Japan was particularly pleasant that year. Yellow crocuses bloomed alongside the walls of Shigure's home, encouraged along by Yuki's green thumb, and he couldn't help but feel pleased every time he caught a glimpse of Honda-san's face at the sight of them. Even Shigure was more active, lured out of his nocturnal lifestyle by gentle breezes and soft sunlight.

Still, every season has its rain showers and this Spring was no exception; Yuki had woken up to gray skies and the occasional surprising _plip _falling at unexpected moments, on a forearm or directly on his eyeball. By the time he'd assisted Honda-san in rescuing the hanging laundry they were caught in a full downpour.

"Honda-san, have you finished your homework yet?" Yuki asked the girl, glancing up from his own assignments spread across the kitchen table to see her standing at the sink, a small pile of vegetables soaking in a tub of iced water. He knew how she struggled in her classes and, as the new term was fast approaching, was prepared to offer his assistance.

"Nearly," she replied with a smile, tucking a flyaway strand of brown hair underneath her yellow bandana to keep it out of the way. She picked up a zucchini and glanced at it critically for a moment before expertly sliding a knife up the side, shaving off a perfect curl of peel. "Shigure-san was so kind to help me with my essay assignment this year. He was really very helpful."

"Imagine that," Yuki replied dryly. "What was the topic—the 'sexual awakening of the teenage virgin'?" He wished he hadn't said it the moment the words left his mouth; Tohru's face flamed crimson and she almost dropped her knife.

"N—no!" she stammered. He could practically envision steam billowing out of her ears. "Heaven forbid…"

"I'm teasing," he said, afraid she'd accidentally cut herself if her hands flailed any more. "Calm down, Miss Honda." To distract her, he asked, "And your other assignments?"

"Well," she said, cheeks still stained a deep red as she resumed her zucchini peeling, "I did most of the math assignment myself. But some of the problems were confusing, and I wondered if Sohma-kun may be willing to look over them for me?"

"Sure," he said, smiling back at her. She was just so likable, always quietly busy and content. He'd never met anyone quite so earnest before, and was grateful for her friendship. "What are you making?"

"Well," she replied, pointing with her knife to a handwritten recipe pinned to the corkboard Shigure had set up in the kitchen, "there's a bit of a nip in the air today because of all the rain, and you brought in all these vegetables; I thought I'd make vegetable and rice stew for supper. What do you think?"

"Sounds amazing," Yuki said with sincerity. If Tohru made it, it was bound to be superb. "Make sure to include plenty of leeks for the stupid cat."

"Well," Tohru chuckled, "maybe a few. If he doesn't know they're in there, it should be fine. And they're really very good for you; I'd hate to waste them. Where is Kyo-kun anyway? I haven't seen him all day."

Yuki shrugged. "Probably too tired to get out of bed. You know how he gets when it rains; lazy."

"That's probably it," Tohru mused, setting the second naked zucchini aside and turning her attention on a large potato. "Say, doesn't he have training with Shishou-san on Sundays? Maybe we should wake him up… he'd probably be angry if we let him miss it because of the rain."

"I'll do it," Yuki volunteered, happy to abandon his homework and annoy his nemesis. He was already formulating possibilities—how best to get under the cat's skin? Of course an unnecessarily obnoxious wake-up call would be the first step, and then a completely nonchalant reaction to his rage.

He walked up the stairs to Shigure's old office barely concealing his wicked smirk. He curled his hand lovingly around the door's handle and braced his shoulders, waiting to pounce…

_Bang_! He threw the door open so fast that it slammed into the opposite wall and made the house rattle.

"Boys, don't break my house!" he heard Shigure call from the direction of his bedroom. He ignored his older cousin and looked around.

Kyo's room was always surprisingly neat, at least compared to Yuki's own. Kyo didn't seem to have a lot of belongings, and what he did have was stacked and put into drawers. The bed was always made.

It was made _now_, which seemed very odd. There was no nest of orange bedhead on the pillow, at least. Kyo was nowhere in sight.

"Hey, stupid cat!" he called in the direction of the upstairs bathroom. "Where are you?"

No answer.

Honda-san's anxious face peeped up the stairs. "He isn't home?" she asked, surprised. "Well he wouldn't be on top of the house in _this _weather, would he?"

As if to emphasize her question, the rain poured with more vigor than ever, thundering like rocks against the roof.

Shigure propped open the door to his room, the ink smudge on his jaw a testament to how lost in his current—no doubt perverse—novel. He probably wanted to get it finished before his deadline so he could pretend to not work on it at all when his poor tortured editor made a visit. "Kyo's not home?" he asked. "I didn't hear him leave… you don't think he went out to do his normal morning exercises and got trapped in the storm, do you?"

Yuki could have smacked his sly relative. It was as if that statement were perfectly calculated to send Tohru into hysterics.

"Oh no, this is terrible!" she moaned, clutching the sides of her face and dithering anxiously on the spot. "No doubt that's what happened! Oh, he's probably stuck somewhere unable to move at all! He could be anywhere! He could…"

Yuki didn't often like to use his… _charm _on other people, and especially not Tohru. It felt dishonest somehow, and definitely made him feel sleazy. It was exactly the sort of thing his brother did to get his way. But he supposed, in moderation, a little dazzling could be forgiven.

"Miss Honda," he breathed, lidding his gray-violet eyes and peering down at her from between long smoky lashes. He rested a hand on her shoulder and used the other to turn her face up to his. She stopped mid-word and her brown eyes went blank, a light flush rising on her cheeks. "It's alright; no need to worry. Why don't I just go out and look for him, hmm?" he let his fingers play down her neck slightly and her blush increased from pale pink to red.

"Ah… ok," she agreed. "If you're sure… Do you want me to come with you?"

"No, but thank you for the offer," he leaned closer, praying she'd stay still- if her chest bumped his she'd have a much smaller and squeakier Yuki to deal with. "You are most kind… _princess_."

"Jeez, Yuki," Shigure complained as he left the melted puddle of Tohru to compose herself and made his way down the hallway. "Try not to use your powers for evil, or I'll die of jealousy."

Yuki ignored him and slipped back downstairs, grabbing his raincoat and his umbrella along the way. Of course the moment he stepped outside he realized the futility of such an action; rain pelted at him from every angle at such a speed that it stung upon hitting his skin. He was bone-soaked within moments and, with a growl, he abandoned the umbrella underneath the garden fence, hoping the strong winds wouldn't whip it away.

"Where are you, stupid cat?" he grumbled to himself.


	2. Chapter 2

Kyo wasn't behind the house; his weights were neatly assembled in their plastic box like always. But Yuki did find a few footprints in the mud, disappearing quickly as the hard, pelting rain wore at the ground, making it slicker and slipperier. He followed them as far as they lead, a few feet down the dusty—now _muddy_—road, but soon they disappeared into nothingness. At least they were headed away from the woods and seemed to be pointing towards town.

Kyo had two morning workout routes. Both began with stretching and weights, and concluded with a run. Option one was a brief run through the woods, more effective for its resistance—clambering up and down hills and in between trees—than for its distance. The second lead into town, past their school, and back around on a loop, and was about eleven miles total.

Eleven miles felt more like a thousand that day. Each step felt like a strain, like forcing his body through molasses. The wind and rain pelted so hard against his body that Yuki lost his balance several times, and the mud squishing and sliding underneath his feet certainly hadn't been any help. He considered hunching underneath his slicker and using his cell phone to ring Hatori, his only relative with a car, for assistance, but didn't want to wait for the family doctor to travel all the way from the main house. He would never admit it, even to himself, but Yuki felt a little worried about his cousin.

The rain let up slightly when he'd almost reached the school grounds, and Yuki could have wept with relief. The strain was actually quite hard on his body, and he'd felt the first flutter of a very familiar sensation in his throat and in his chest. The sensation was tied hand in hand with dread—he knew very well what it could lead to—an attack of his weak bronchial tubes. He didn't fancy suffocating to death in a rainstorm just yet, thanks very much.

With not so much rain pouring into his eyes, Yuki was more able to look around at his surroundings as he pulled his ruined shoes, step by step, out of the never-ending mud pile that was once a road. The damage was incredible; fences were toppled and farming areas were positively flooded. He groaned in dread thinking about his _own _garden.

"Help!" a weak voice called when he was mere blocks from school. "Please, help me…"

His ears perked up at the call, and he glanced around.

An old man was trapped in his garden, heavily entangled in clothesline and partially buried under a sucking pile of mud. Yuki rushed to his side and began scooping the gloppy puddles aside, away from hisface.

"Oh, thank you, young man," he said in gratitude as he slid his arms underneath his shoulders and heaved him into a sitting position, using his sharp fingernails to cut the clothesline away from wrinkled skin. "I thought for sure I was going to drown."

He helped him to him feet and walked him to the door. "Can I offer you anything, son?" the grandfatherly man asked. "Some tea? I have a little cake…"

"No, thank you," he replied, trying to shake the dark earth from his hands. "I'm looking for someone. Have you seen a boy around today? He's about my age, with very orange hair. He's gone missing, and…"

He was shaking her head. "I'm afraid I haven't seen anybody all day but you. My wife's gone away for a trip to Hokkaido and I thought it'd be a nice day to do some gardening. You can bet I didn't expect my clothesline to fall down from the wind and trap me!"

He nodded and turned to continue his way up the path, when he commented, "It's funny that you should say 'orange' though. I saw a cat today the most beautiful shade of orange I'd ever seen! Like a sunset."

Yuki felt his insides freeze at the words, and he pivoted slowly to stare at him as she wiped his feet off on the sodden doormat. "A… cat, sir?" he asked, hearing his heart thundering in his ears. If Kyo had weakened into his cat form _before _the rain really started to fall, he couldn't imagine the state of his cousin now.

"Yes, poor thing seemed to be in some distress," the man said. "I can't stand cats myself, terribly allergic, but I would've taken him in if I hadn't already been stuck. He just wandered up the road a ways…" the man pointed, presumably in the direction said distressed cat had travelled, and then Yuki was off as fast as his slender legs could carry him, slipping and sliding in the mud like a rat in grease.

He would have missed him entirely if it hadn't been for the children. A group of kids—two boys and a girl—sat in a huddle around an overworked storm drain. The rain had settled into a light drizzle and more and more people were daring to leave their houses; the children had no doubt been bored from being cooped up all day.

"That's _mean,_ Sato!" the little girl, who couldn't possibly be older than five years old, snapped at the boy. "No, stop; you're making him bleed!"

"Aaw, it's fine," Sato snapped. "It's dead anyway. Drowned. Don't you wanna see what's inside it?"

"No!" the girl cried, clapping her hands over his ears. "No, no no. And he's _not _dead, look! He moved!"

"Almost dead, then," the other boy, a husky nine-year-old, grunted. "Come on, do it Sato! I wanna see its guts. Sakura, quit being a baby."

A pitiful meow rang out, so pained and familiar that it stopped Yuki in his tracks.

"Stop!" Sakura screamed, becoming unglued. She threw herself on Sato—who bore such a striking resemblance to her that they _had _to be siblings—and knocked a long, bloody stick from his hands.

Yuki approached the children and looked over their hunched figures; before them, partially blocking the storm drain, lay a cat. It was so entrenched with mud that it was impossible to determine its true fur color, and so plastered to its shivering body that it appeared very small. A long, bleeding cut wound down its belly as if someone had tried to carve it open, and the water around it was quickly becoming a darker and darker pink. It opened fiery eyes and looked up at Yuki.

There was no mistaking those eyes.

The husky boy slapped the girl, hard, in the face and her cries echoed up the street. "_Now _you've done it, Toya!" Sato snarled. "You don't touch my sister." He twisted and punched his friend in the stomach and soon they were rolling around, wrestling like animals in the mud.

Sakura turned horrified eyes on Yuki, who was snapped out of his reverie from the fear he saw there. "_Hey_!" he bellowed, enraged. The children split apart and gaped up at him.

"You little… I just…" the normally calm and stoic Yuki Sohma was at a loss for words. "I ought to find your parents… do you even know…"

He ripped off his slicker and his long-sleeved t-shirt, dropping to his knees by Kyo's side.

"Is this your cat, mister?" Sakura asked.

"Yes!" Yuki roared with such vehemence that the flutter in his chest returned, just for a second, but a little stronger than before. The children cowered back, no doubt recognizing the absolute fury in his face.

He was as careful as he could ever remember being when he slid the animal into his lap, but the wound still stretched open even more, hot blood bubbling to the surface. "Oh, god," he whispered under his breath. "Kyo… come on, you stupid cat."

The fiery orange eyes never once left his face as he tied his shirt over the cats middle, but he felt Kyo's heart thud, more rapid than a hummingbird's, against his skin.

"I'll get you home, we've got this," he said. Kyo was starting to shiver, and so Yuki lifted the hem of his undershirt and pressed the dripping-wet animal to the bare skin of his stomach.

"We're real sorry, mister," Sato said, likely still afraid of having his crimes reported to his parents.

"Yeah," Toya agreed, nodding hastily. "We didn't know it was somebody's pet."

"So you think that makes it ok?" Yuki's voice was quiet, but his eyes flashed until there was something much older than a high school boy staring out at them—something ancient, something reincarnated hundreds upon hundreds of times. Never before had Yuki felt the power of his rat spirit so close to the surface—and it was over _Kyo_, of all things. "You think causing a living creature pain to sate your own curiosity is _acceptable_? Animals have souls. Don't ever forget it."

He left the three wide-eyed children behind without so much as a backwards glance as he hustled—not back to Shigure's house, but to Kazuma's dojo which was much closer.

"Hang in there, stupid cat," he said worriedly.

The flutter rose in his chest as he ran again, pulsing and hard. He wasn't sure how long he himself had.


	3. Chapter 3

"Shishou-san," Yuki wheezed into his cellphone, ducking past houses to avoid being seen. "Please pick up the phone. I'm almost at your dojo; Kyo and I are in pretty bad shape, and…"

There was no answer, and soon the dojo's voicemail began making little beeps, signaling the end of the call. Yuki snapped his phone closed and growled in frustration. "Dammit," he snarled, and then coughed, deeply and loudly, feeling his lungs rattle in his chest.

Kyo let out a little alarmed yowl—even hurt as he was, he recognized that cough. Claws extended smoothly from padded toes, pressing to Yuki's abdomen warningly.

"Stop that, stu—" Yuki began, but was interrupted by more coughing. "So much trouble," he gasped for air. He felt as if his throat had been stung by hundreds of bees, swelling the tissue and blocking his breath. He heaved for oxygen, falling to his knees.

Kyo yowled again, wriggling madly. "Damnit," he spat, tearing his way through the thin cotton of Yuki's undershirt just as the boy collapsed to his side. He swatted harshly at Yuki's face with heavy paws, wincing as every blow irritated his still-bleeding cut. "_Yu-ki-get-up,_" he hissed and spat between meows and grunts. "_Don't-you-dare-_"

There was a pop and a flooding of periwinkle smoke, and then Yuki found himself gazing up at an enraged—and exhausted—Kyo through much smaller eyes.

Kyo's stream of profanity then would make Tohru blush. It was actually kind of humorous, Yuki thought, such foul language from such a cute cat.

Kyo lowered his jaws like an arcade game's claw. Yuki's brain, starved for oxygen as it was, still felt an instinctual fear; no rat wanted to be inside a cat's mouth. But Kyo was surprisingly gentle and mindful of his pointed teeth as he carried the tiny creature.

And Kyo ran, as only a cat can, slinky and smooth, practically a shadow over grass. But perhaps not quite as smooth as normal, as he still carried with him a heavy limp. If he noticed the shining trail of blood he left behind him with every step, he made no sign of it.

Running uphill was torturous, and Yuki, passing in and out of consciousness, heard his cousin's small whines and whimpers at the back of his throat. Kyo's pace was slowing despite his best efforts. He stumbled and fell, with a bone jarring impact on the ground, keeping his jaws firmly around Yuki even as he did so to avoid losing the other boy. He tried to stand, shook heavily, and fell back again.

"So close to the dojo," he moaned, dropping his cousin down to rest on his soft forepaws. "Really thought we'd make it. Still alive, damn rat?"

Yuki couldn't speak. He saw shimmering waves of deepest violet at the corners of his eyes, constricting, _blinding _him. The worst part of his attacks was the _pressure _being unable to breathe caused, like giant hands squeezing his skull.

If a cat could scowl, Kyo certainly was. His body was shivering violently now, chilled to the bone from rainwater and blood loss. He felt barely in control of his motor skills, but some feline instinct caused him to run a sharp, rasping tongue up the rat's furred chest. He repeated the action. In his mind's eye, he envisioned cats with newborn kittens, stimulating the respiratory system with heat and motion.

_Lick. Lick._

Yuki let out a pained squeak and, encouraged, Kyo licked faster, flipping the rodent over to run long stripes up his back. Yuki squeaked louder, then gave a prolonged squeal. Finally,

"Stop it, Kyo! That hurts!"

If he could speak, he could breathe. Kyo flopped his head to the side, relieved.

_Just a little nap, _he reasoned. _I'm so tired, and so cold._

"Kyo, Kyo, _Kyo_, please…" Yuki pushed at the cat's face with tiny paws, caught in a forest of tickly white whiskers. "Wake up and I'll buy you all the salmon in the world. I'll never plant another leak. I'll let you beat me in any fight you want!"

No response. Yuki wanted to scream. "You don't just get to save my life and then _die_, stupid cat!" he insisted, sinking bucked incisors into Kyo's fleshy little nose.

No response.

"Dammit!" he switched tactics. "Tohru will never love you! You'll be locked in the cat's room forever! You're an ugly, useless monster!"

Nothing!

A rustle in the bushes nearby caused Yuki to startle. He realized his position now; a tiny, half-dead rat in a completely unknown location. He scurried, burying himself against Kyo's motionless chest.

_Whump… whump….._

Well at least his heart was still beating, albeit faintly.

A face appeared above him; long, fluffy gray fur and large yellow eyes. Black stripes crisscrossed across her muzzle, giving her a slightly more feral appearance than the pink ribbon around her neck warranted.

The Persian cat patted at his hiding place, scooping him away from Kyo with soft pink paw pads.

"Kyo-cat not moving," she said, distressed. "Why Kyo-cat hurt? Sophie-cat don't like. Damn rat hurt Kyo-cat?" she worried at the blood still staining Kyo's belly-fur.

_Oh great. A cat-spirit fangirl._

"No, Miss Sophie," Yuki protested from her paws. "I want to save, er, _Kyo-cat_."

Was he imagining it, or did Kyo give a little, disgusted twitch at the name?

Sophie inched her squashed pink nose down and sniffed Yuki suspiciously.

"Damn rat covered in Kyo-cat kisses," she remarked, surprised. "Kyo-cat shares kisses with none, not-a-once."

Yuki squirmed uncomfortably at the thought of Kyo's "kisses" all over his body. But…

"Exactly! We're friends… _family_! Please, you have to get help. He's dying…"

Sophie squatted on the ground and inclined one droopy ear towards him. It took Yuki a moment to understand, but he quickly scrabbled atop her head, clutching two paws full of her long fur for balance as he perched between her ears.

"Sophie-cat take Damn Rat to daddy for help," Sophie said. "Girls watch Kyo-cat for safe."

_Girls? _Yuki twisted around to see two more cats emerging from the rosebush, a Russian blue mix and a short-haired tabby standing over Kyo's limp body like warriors. As he watched, the tabby pressed her lanky body to his side, sharing her warmth.

Sophie scampered off then without a second's warning, with Yuki holding on for dear life, wondering who exactly "daddy" was.


End file.
